Weekly Question #8: Complete by November 9

Leave your response as a comment on this post by the beginning of class on November 9. Remember, it only needs to be three or four sentences. For these weekly questions, I’m mainly interested in your opinions, not so much particular “facts” from the class!

Here is the question:

Once again, find another online article dated within last two weeks from a credible source that has something to do with data and is interesting and relevant to you. Copy and paste the URL directly into your response followed by a few sentences that explain what is interesting about it.

54 Responses to Weekly Question #8: Complete by November 9

Explanation: I chose this article because it is about the 2018 Winter Olympics. I always watch both the winter and summer Olympics, so this information is very interesting to me. In the article, the author talks about how they are creating a “foundation for a massive new wave of connected devices and data” as Intel is collaborating with South Korea’s KT Corporation in order to share their advancements with 5G technologies.

This article is interesting to me because it discusses Trump’s tax bill and I am an accounting major and am doing a project that has to deal with the tax reform. Only 25% of people believe the tax plan is a good idea, but that is pretty good. The 25% of people that think it is a good idea probably know about taxes while the rest may not know or just do not approve of Trump. Also 39% of Americans did not form an opinion yet.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/26/national-park-plastics-bottled-water-ban
I found a really interesting article pertaining to the environment and how Trump’s reversal of the ban of water bottles in national parks will continue to hurt the environment. There are 331 million people that go and visit the US national parks each year and there are one million plastic bottles sold per minute. That is a lot of people who will come and want to bring water bottled. Because of this idea, the national parks banned the use of water bottles, which saved them 2 million water bottles, which is the equivalent to 419 cubic yards of landfill space. With all of this great information found, Trump reversed the ban 3 months later, leaving the national parks and the environment vulnerable.

This article is about the recent mobile data leak of 46 million users in Malaysia. The leaked data includes personal user information, ID card numbers, mobile phone numbers, SIM card information, and addresses. The main threat of this data leak is for the affected customers to have social engineering attacks against them where further information could be leaked, or the information could be enough for the criminals to crate fraudulent identities to make online purchases. This is particularly interesting to me as it relates to cyber-security, a field I may decide to work in in the future.

An article I recently read was: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2017/oct/31/terror-trends-what-are-the-most-common-phobias-among-us-adults. I thought it was only fitting to include it here since Halloween was just a week ago. The article presents data about the most common phobias among adults. As an advertising student, I found this article quite interesting because of the demographical insights they were able to pull from the survey. These insights included “being female, young, and low income increased the risk of developing any of the phobias, while being Asian or Hispanic decreased risk.” I’m easily fascinated by how the mind works and I liked how they were able to gather these conclusions off of a simple survey. Insights like these are what drive successful advertising campaigns.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-ultimate-halloween-candy-power-ranking/
I found this article, “The Ultimate Halloween Candy Power Ranking” to be very interesting and relevant because Halloween was a few days ago. I thought it was interesting that the collectors of the data split what makes candy most desirable into 9 categories (i.e. chocolate, fruity, contains peanuts, etc.). I thought this was a very cool article to read because it shows that data really is everywhere, and even something as simple as what Halloween candy is the most popular can be analyzed to figure out exactly why people find certain candies more appealing than others.

I think this article is very interesting and relevant to today. Its about the mass shooting problem in America, that seem to never end. In 2017 there were no more than five days without a mass shooting. The data shows that each circle, sized by total deaths and injuries, represents a mass shooting. A mass shooting is defined as when at least four people are injured or killed in one location, not including the suspect with a firearm. This is an ongoing problem in America because of all the gun control debates, but its deeper than that. This kind of stuff doesn’t happen in other developed Nations like in Western Europe, Asia, and Australia, the problem is America has an obsession with guns. Gun control won’t end it until the culture of the obsession with guns ends.

http://flowingdata.com/2017/11/01/who-is-married-by-now/
This article shows is an interactive graph, showing the percentages of people who are married at a certain age, vs those who aren’t married at that age. They also break it down by race, which I thought was interesting because in todays day and age there are a lot of mixed relationships/ marriages. The graph would have been better if it allowed you to mix and match races as well as genders, considering the world we live in now. Other than that I found the article to be interesting and informative to an extent.

One thing that I also shared with Elon Musk that we are not fascinated with the advancement of Artificial Intelligence(AI). For me, human should always be the one that rule the earth. If, A.I managed to take advantage on the all available data on earth about us, together with their super analytics capabilities, doomsday might be looming.

I find this article extremely interesting because if this tax bill is passed, it would be the biggest reconstruction of the tax system since the 1980’s. This article goes in depth on the polling numbers in regards of how people view this potential bill passing into legislation. Further in the article they show the approval ratings of President Trump, and also the Democratic advantage over the republicans on the generic congressional ballot which i thought both were very interesting.

This article focuses on the 2017 World Series and the surging number of home runs hit. What the article does is try to debunk the idea that the baseballs used in the Fall Classic are actually more slick and slippery like pitchers have said. The author uses the chart “Home runs per contact in the World Series vs. regular season, 1995-2017” and the trend baseball has taken. Evidence and statistics are also used to show that even if baseballs were slicker, they actually would not go as far and would not be causing the increase in home runs hit. In the year of the home run (2017 has seen the most home runs ever hit in a single season) it just seems fitting that all these bombs are being hit in the World Series, it does not have to do with the baseballs.

https://sports.yahoo.com/eagles-now-4th-best-odds-192411317.html
My article has to do with super bowl odds and MVP odds. Right now the Eagles have the 4th best odds at winning the super bowl behind the Patriots, Seahawks, and Packers. Carson Wentz also has high odds of winning MVP this season behind Alex Smith and Tom Brady. I love the Eagles so that is why this data is relevant to me.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/07/mobile-phone-data-could-replace-census-questionnaires-in-the-uk/
This article talks about how in the UK, the use of collecting mobile phone data could replace the census questionnaire. The Office of National Statistics collects census reports through paper questionnaires but are also looking into mobile phone data. I think this is very interesting because this is a new way of collecting data. I see a problem with using phone data as the collection process because not everyone has a phone or some people have multiple phones (one for work and one personal).

Explanation: I chose this article because stocks have literally everything to do with data. Data about the stocks is used to determine how much the stock is worth each day, all day. This week in my Business of Media Class we were assigned roles of Media Professionals. I was assigned Amazon so it was interesting to me that in the midst of their stock surpassing $1,000, and departments of their company going through some issues, CEO Jeff Bezos sold 1 Billion worth of Amazon stock.

I chose this article of Biometrics in sports because it is interesting and also similar to the fitbit/insurance reading we did in class. In summary, sports are using the app Whoop, which measures heart rate, sweat, and other factors, that show potential exhaustion in sports. This is a blessing and a curse for sports, because while it can warn of potential dangers, it also limits the amount of playing time for a player, which can cause the star players being forced to come out because of “warning” from the app even if the player wants to stay in, he will be forced out by coaches.

http://variety.com/2017/tv/ratings/sunday-night-football-ratings-1202607733/
As someone who is interested in the sports field, a KPI of how popular the sport is, can be the television ratings that the nationally televised games bring in. I also wrote a paper on declining NFL ratings last year when this trend started, so keeping up to date with the ratings has become somewhat of a hobby of mine. This article pointed out that the most recent Sunday Night Football game hit a season low in ratings, if these trends continue, it could create the panic that the networks had last year.

From this article and data set, I found it interesting that the 3 activities those who are employed so with their time is sleep, work, and socializing/leisure/relaxing time. Those who are unemployed spend most of the time sleeping, socializing/leisure/relaxing, and household activities.

“Significant digits” is a daily report of some interesting statistical numbers. A couple of the most notable from today’s article include the predicted area of expansion for a new self-driving car company in Phoenix, which clocks in at 600 square miles. Secondly, the company behind snapchat has had its shares at such a low value they are completely overhauling snapchat itself, which both seems risky and odd as snapchat is on just about every teenagers phone.

This article is talking about how all of the main cable news stations are talking about Russia so much but all from different angles. The data in the article shoes trend lines so you can visually see the types of conflicting messages being portrayed in the media. I think it is an interesting article because it is so relevant to the current politics in our country and the visual was interesting and easy to understand.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lebron-cant-do-it-all-alone/
This article talks about the struggling Cavaliers. While Lebron James continues to do what he’s always done, his teammates aren’t contributing nearly at the same rate as last year. That’s causing the woes the team is facing early in the season. They are not defending well nor are they shooting well despite playing with the same formula as last year. Right now it is all Lebron.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/27/bitcoins-origin-story-remains-shrouded-in-mystery-heres-why-it-matters.html
This article was interesting to me because the creator of bitcoin’s identity is still unknown and the creator essentially owns 5% of the 21 million finite supply of bitcoin. For comparison purposes, the united states holds the most gold reserves in the world at about 8,000 tons, which is a little over 4% while the creator of bitcoin owns 5% of the bitcoin supply valued at around over 5 billion. In other words, the creator of bitcoin has more currency dilution power than the united states has over gold. Dumping more currency in circulation essentially decreases its value and having this unknown identity that owns about 5% of a rapidly appreciation currency can be troublesome in the short term if this person were to dump their stash of bitcoins on the market.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2017/oct/31/terror-trends-what-are-the-most-common-phobias-among-us-adults
This article was about the most common phobias among our population. the sample size for the study was 43,093 people. the data was displayed in a table, and also displayed in a graph that is shaped like a mountain because a fear of heights is one of the phobias. The graph showed just the 5 most prevalent ones. I thought this article was interesting because the graph was very appealing, so I thought they did a good job with that display of data. I also thought it was interesting because most people have weird things that creep them out, so it was pretty cool to see some of the most common ones.

This article has an extremely interesting take on the Equifax data breach, the dives into why it happened in the first place. I’ve always known that when you submit information for something free in return you are the product so it doesn’t surprise me that Equifax has been making a profit off of all the consumer data they collected through credit karma. What does interest me is that Verison and Yahoo are defending Equifax’s rights to own the data, while this might legally be true I’m concerned about what precedent it sets for future businesses.

If they own are data does this mean they have a right to decide whether or not they want to protect it from potential hacks?
For example, if your identity was stolen from this data breach, does this mean you can’t hold Equifax accountable for not protecting the data you gave voluntarily? Does we forfeit the rights to our own data when we are given something free in return?

This article is about how people can use social media platforms like instagram to make money. The article suggests that people with 3,000 to 10,000 followers can make around 250 US Dollars for one branded post. I found this interesting because I use social media everyday, and while I do not have this many followers on Instagram or Twitter, it is funny to think that having followers can become a career for some people.http://www.businessinsider.com/inkifi-website-tells-you-how-much-your-instagram-posts-are-worth-2017-11

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/08/ashamed-to-work-in-silicon-valley-how-techies-became-the-new-bankers
This article was about, how people who work for very successful or well known companies, such as Facebook are becoming ashamed to be apart or once to have been apart of the team. I found this to be interesting because these companies are so well known companies that people used to be proud of. The article also talks about how, the tech industry today is being looked down upon as people who are getting paid for too much for what they do. I feel indifferent about this, because it really depends on the situation. The data involves how tech was looked at years ago to compared today.

According to a survey of over 40,000 Americans, the most common phobias are animals (birds, insects, and others) and heights (mountains, tall buildings, bridges). The researchers found that people most likely to have phobias are young, low-income females and that the average age for developing a phobia is between 9 and 10. Some of the other most common phobias include being in closed spaces, being in/on water, thunderstorms, and traveling.

http://flowingdata.com/2017/10/19/mapping-happiness/
This is a pretty cute chart that is mapping happiness. It shows each state and a smiley face or frowning smiley face. The bigger the smile the happier those people are living in those states. If the face is frowning, most people in that state are more likely to report worse physical and financial health. These people are more likely to be obese, smoke, or have little interest in life.People living in PA are moderately happy. Some of the happiest people come from Texas, Hawaii, Arizona, and Maine. A lot of unhappy people live in Mississippi, Ohio, and Rhode Island.

http://www.propertycasualty360.com/2017/10/26/wearable-technology-discoverable-data
I found this article interesting because it covers how wearable technologies such as smart watches and fitbits can provide data for new uses. For example, in a Canadian court case the claimant provided evidence of requiring disability benefits by presenting data from their fitbit proving they have insomnia. This is interesting because this is a unique way to prove existing health conditions.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-an-nhl-player-finally-score-50-goals-in-50-games-again/
This article is about how there are only 5 players in the entire NHL history that have scored 50 goals in the first 50 games of the season, and the last to do it were 25 years ago. However, due to data on previous seasons, looking at trends, there’s reason to believe that this year may be the year to break the 25 year curse. Those reasons being several rule changes to hopefully boost the number of goals per game, as well as a low among goaltending that’s the lowest it’s been in almost 10 years. Goalies are just not covering the goals as well this year as previous years. Not to mention superior players that are capable of the milestone, based on their stats thus far. All of this has the potential to break new records, something that the last 25 years of hockey has been missing for decades.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/roy-halladay-was-the-greatest-pitcher-of-his-generation/
Following his sudden death this article is interesting to me due to the fact that I was always a fan of Roy Halladay. Its very interesting viewing his career stats with his different teams, he was ranked #1of his millennium and hit the record books several times winning awards and pitching perfect games. The comparison in different categories showing him go toe-to-toe with some of the all time greatest pitchers really makes a greater appreciation of what he did in the MLB.

I chose an article about recently deceased Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay. The Article explains how impactful Halladay’s career was to the MLB. There are two tables that show how much more complete games Halladay threw then other pitchers in his time. He also posted the highest WAR for pitchers since 2000, even though he hasnt pitched the last 4 years. War is an important statistic for pitchers in the MLB. A pitchers WAR is a calculation that represents a pitchers contribution to winning for their team. It is similar to the QBR statistic that the NFL uses for quarter backs. He also threw the most complete games in the decade of 2000 to 2010. (shown in the second table). With all this being said it still claims in the article that Halladay may have trouble getting into to hall of fame. He may face trouble because of a poor start to his career and being in such a bad team which hurt his statistics in some years. Also he faced some injury problems and had to retire during his prime. I think this is ridiculous, maybe I’m biased because I am a phillies fan and I watched Halladay throw a no hitter in person, but the tables shown in this article support Halladays dominance as a pitcher over his career.

This article was written shortly after the tragic shooting at the Texas church. This is a scatter plot that portrays the number of mass shooting, as well as the severity of mass shootings since 1984. What makes this scatter plot effective is that the thickness of each plot represents the severity of the shooting. Therefore, the bigger the shooting, the larger the size of the plot is. The graph shows that mass shootings are becoming both more common and more severe as time goes onI think this is very relevant because it was a tragic event and need to be aware of one of the biggest dangers in this country which is mass shooting.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-an-nhl-player-finally-score-50-goals-in-50-games-again/
I found this article to be interesting to me because the main question it focus’ on, “Can an NHL Players score 50 goals in 50 games?” I am a big hockey fan so this article caught my eye instantly. The site shows the reader graphs about the top scorers throughout the years and how many goals they got. It is a very hard thing to do and it gives a challenge for the players. Gives detail about the players and compare stats throughout the article.

http://flowingdata.com/2017/10/19/american-daily-routine/
This article is interesting because it shows how different groups of people spend their time throughout the day. It shows that a majority of females who aren’t look for employment spend their weekdays sleeping from 10pm-8am, doing household activities from 8am-12pm or 4pm-5pm, and socializing, relaxing, and leisure from 1pm-10pm. On the other hand, males who aren’t looking for employment don’t focus on household activities as much as females and spend more time on socializing and leisure activities. It’s interesting to see the variation of things people do through the day depending on whether its a weekday or weekend, if they are male or female, and if the are employed, unemployed, or not looking.

This data visualization focuses on different types of activities people do, what time they do it, and the percentage of the activity during all hours of the day. When i first opened the article, i had assumed that it was going to be a little bit more trickier than it was to read and comprehend, but it turns out the data was represented very clearly. All of the activities in the chart are listed on the left side, while the bars are represented in different levels of color to indicate the percentage. Overall, i really like this visualization. I have never seen information represented the way this one is laid out but I think it is very clear. The only thing about it that could be improved is to add more activities to it.

http://results.regattatiming.com/backoffice/webpages/staticRaceResults.jsp?raceId=429 This is the results page from the Princeton Chase regatta about two weeks ago. This is important data to me because my team and I look at this data to see how we compared to other teams that showed up and how teams performed this year versus last year. Race results are always important to look at because we can pull a lot of statistics and data from them.

Recently, about two weeks ago, I received an email informing me that I may have been affected by a privacy breach on Equifax. I was granted a free credit report for each of the main three bureaus. The article I read discusses why Equifax even contains some of these peoples information. Supposedly Equifax does not believe that they should have to give up individuals personal information because they “own” it, even though people would prefer to opt out of them storing the information. All in all, Equifax is an ethics battle determining if they should be able to withhold personal data of many Americans who prefer them not to have the data.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/08/microsoft-starts-using-linkedin-data-to-help-you-get-a-better-job.html
I think this article is interesting and relevant to me because I use LinkedIn on a daily basis, and for one, I was never aware that Microsoft owns LinkedIn. I also didn’t know that Microsoft has a program called The Resume Assistant, which could be very helpful to me. I think it’s cool that Microsoft uses data from LinkedIn and helps people see different descriptions of the job they’re looking for and the skills necessary for it, too.

This article interested me because it discusses a new program that Villanova University is implementing in the Fall of 2018 to help its accounting students obtain the CPA 150 credit requirement. As an accounting major this is really relevant to me because obtaining 150 credits for the CPA exam is no easy task. The program is called MACDA, which offers 36 credits with classes on Big Data and Data Analytics. The courses are all online, which was done to allow students to allocate more of their time to prepare for the CPA exam. Some courses offered in the program are Data Modeling/Business Intelligence and ERP Systems/Data Analytics.

This article discusses how MatchGroup will increase its investment on its Tinder app. They have already stabilized brands like Plenty of Fish, OkCupid, and Match.com. Tinder currently has 3 ways of earning money, “subscriptions, a la carte purchases and advertising.” But with introducing a new paid service, Tinder Gold, MatchGroup hopes to have a surge of new users on the app. Capital will also be invested into features such as enhanced artificial intelligence, new post-match activities for users, and better location technology.

http://flowingdata.com/2017/11/06/cities-projected-to-be-under-water-by-2100/
This article describes and graphs what cities it predicts will be under water by 2100. Climate change appears is a real thing and people are still in denial about it, and it only seems to be getting worse. It is estimated that 275 million people will be not be able to live where they do now due to flooding.

This article is about the controversy surrounding the president and Russia’s involvement in our last election. It speaks of how the Russians used the masses the same way advertisers do, by data mining. This is the act of using an algorithm to filter data and taper it to an individual’s preferences. There isn’t much about how or why they did it, but it is an interesting development to the whole story.

So this morning Fivethirtyeight put out a new article showing the voting landscape of a county in Iowa. I am really into politics so for me it is really interesting to see the trends and demographics shifts in polling data. The article pointed out that there was only one country in the united states that voted both Obama in 2012 and with Trump in 2016 in land slide victories, and that county was Howard County in northern Iowa. Landslide victories are described as winning the vote by more than 20%. This paints a bigger pitcher on what the country wants from their president. They want change, and Hilary reflected she was not that.

This article goes into the obesity problems America is going through and how despite all the efforts we have been trying to make over the years to solve this problem. The percentages of obese Americans has actually gone up slightly since the last report, which is anything but good. About 40% of adults are obese while 18.5% of children are also obese.

This article is interesting because i didn’t know that disney studio is in the lead with the most movies revenue. Now Disney is trying to make a deal with 21 centry Fox. If deal were to go through, then disney will most likely be the top revenue maker in movie studio since they own other studios too like marvel.